Priorities for the 2017 legislative session, tackling student remediation and building partnerships with local organizations were discussed at Friday’s Mississippi Community College Board meeting.
• Dr. Andrea Mayfield, executive director of the Community College Board, reported that a request for an increase in spending authority of $14.5 million was presented Thursday to the House Appropriations Committee.
“We have been working very hard here at the agency as a team to bring in external funds to support the initiatives that impact community college students, ” says Mayfield.
The board will present the same request to the Senate on Wednesday.
• Mayfield also reported on her meeting with Dr. Glenn Boyce, commissioner of the Board of Trustees of Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning, and Dr. Carey Wright, state superintendent of education K-12, to tackle the remediation education issue.
Remediation, or basic instruction to help students achieve expected competencies in core academic skills, falls into three categories: high school dropouts returning for GED, high school graduates enrolling in college and adult learners.
“We currently remeditate about 46,000 students a year. The most concerning group is high school graduates entering college. We spend $11.5 million remediating those students,” Mayfield said.
• Visiting presenter and potential partner 2nd Chance MS described for the board its program that raises awareness and funds for adult education and work skills training.
2nd Chance has a mission to “support your mission” to educate and train adults for their high school equivalency and prepare them for success in the work force, 2nd Chance president Dickie Scruggs told the group. (Scruggs is a donor to Mississippi Today.)
Currently, 2nd Chance MS operates a pilot program offering financial assistance to 100 participants at Northeast Mississippi Community College and Itawamba Community College. Qualifying students are those who did not earn a high school diploma. In six months, participants may earn a high school diploma and one of six nationally recognized manufacturing skill certifications.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.